PROVOKING A BIT THE COACHING COMMUNITY
simone galimberti
Development Practitioner, Trainer and Facilitator and Opinion Writer
In a recent online discussion forum, I started thinking about the goodness the coaching community could create in the world.
Over the last few weeks I have been reflecting on the role of the coaching industry in the world and how it can potentially become a better force for the good of the humanity.
I was inspired by a conversation within the community that is participating in the Year of Living Brilliantly run by the brilliant (could he be otherwise?) MBS.
It was the insights of Desiree Adaway, a consultant in equity and social inclusion in workplaces that prompted the debate and suddenly, as I joked in the discussion group, I started playing the role of Bernie Sanders, challenging the coaching industry to really put its weight behind a stronger aim.
I am not referring here just to the social justice discussions in the USA inspired by Black Lives Matter but instead mine is a broader reflection that could, potentially helps transforming coaching everywhere in the world.
Now a disclosure: I do not call myself a coach, I never sought a certification nor I have any type of paying clients that normally sustain the profession.
I started got interested in coaching doing my work with a small NGO I co-founded with Kalpana, my wife here in Nepal and I got the foundations from a dear friend of mine, Nunzio Buffardeci, an international training and sales coach.
Working with vulnerable youth with disabilities, I was intrigued by coaching because by nature it is not prescriptive but instead provocative in the sense that it helps clients to think, reflect and then act.
Dealing with vulnerable youth who are been told for most of their lives more about what they cannot do rather than what they can, I felt coaching could play a role in the deep conversations I have been having with many of my friends or better “partners” living with disabilities.
For me coaching was a tool among others, including the fundamental thing that coaches hate giving, advices (actually during the Year of Living Brilliantly somehow my use of coaching got vindicated by Jim Knight with his Instructional Coaching Group).
Desiree was talking about forgiveness and reconciliation, indispensable elements to pave way for truly equitable working environments and then something kicked in my mind, about the role of coaching in making the world a better place
Now let me share my provocation posted in the community of Year of Living Brilliantly:
“Because you see if we all agree that so many stuffs are not working as result of greedy capitalism or in the way the economy works (look I am not an ideological guy in here but it seems it is clear that there is something wrong), perhaps coaches should admit that there might be a tiny possibility that they were part of decision making equation or the consequences stemming from facilitating/stimulating certain decisions…
Optimistically, I believe they are part of the solution as well.
Yes a coach helps an executive to achieve her/his goals, all fine here but what if these goals, even indirectly, are not for the common good but just for client’s bottom line AND what if this is going to have negative consequences for others?”
You can see why writing this stuff I was calling myself Bernie because somehow I wanted to push the coaching sector (calling it a “sector” is sweeter and less dry than calling it “industry”, isn’t?) to rethink its assumptions about the world and its contributions to it.
I am going to borrow again from my online comments:
Isn’t coaching is one the most visible expressions of corporate culture we have now, it is?
If not or if this is a too extreme position, do coaches, at minimum, recognize themselves as sort of "enablers" of an environment that often, not always for sure, can yield good outcomes for the client but very bad ones for the others, for the society and planet? Or that helping someone achieve goals might have negative implications for others?
Now do not get me wrong.
I am not saying coaches are bad persons nor I am saying they are working unethically but what I am trying to say that perhaps coaches around the world could push (ahm, I know you do not like this!!) a more transformative agenda to influence (again, you won’t like this) a better world able to achieve the daunting Agenda 2030.
I know that out there are examples of outstanding conscientious coaching like Ben Croft with his EthicalCoach program, Gabriela Teasdale with her Foundation Transformation Paraguay, and the same great Marshall Goldsmith was moved by generosity in his 100 Coaches initiative.
I recently came to know about Kelly Diels and Amy Rhoda Brown and Steve Nicol, these two also members of the Year of Living Brilliantly and I feel they are embedding what I am trying to say.
MBS is also keen to explore the power structures as he explains:
I’m starting to see that the next big thing for me is to more deeply understand power, and how town/see/uncover/cultivate/play/disperse/harness/embrace/reinvent/challenge it. So I’m starting to collect small acts of disruption.
Corporate citizenship like projects are nice but they are still “adds on”.
I am instead more interested to have coaches understanding that their work with their clients can also have a negative impact on the society.
At the end of the day, this is going to be about making choices similarly to what coaches traditionally help their clients doing.
Interestingly there are no inevitable outcomes from this self-reflection and it will be up to coaches to figure out what could work for them, for their clients and yes for the society.
Surely, we can all become better, including coaches.
Coaching can really become a tool for transformational change not by telling clients what they should do but instead by challenging them to ask themselves if what they are pursuing is only good for them or if there is little more of it as well.
In the Year of Living Brilliantly I came to realize that the evidence is there, that values count and behaviors embracing humility and empathy can really help us be better.
A collective self-reflection can truly help the coaching sector being more like a movement rather than just an industry driven exclusively by revenue.
Perhaps there are already there coaches who have embraced the concept of B Corporation but this, after all, is not so important.
You can call still call me Bernie if you like but if you think a bit, these words are much more about common sense and are about embracing a common responsibility rather than idyllic fantasies.
After all is coaching for what?
Writer, editor, coach ? Communication, Clarity, Connection
4 年Thanks for posting this, Simone. I think it's an important conversation to have. If by coaching someone we help them to do whatever they do more effectively, then it seems clear that one shouldn't coach someone who acts against the interest of the community or the planet. That's pretty straightforward. But a better question is, is it within a coach's purview to suggest or nudge a client towards more pro-social or pro-environmental behaviour? As your friend says, one role of a coach is to offer a different perspective, and it's quite possible that a client will choose a better path if they can see a broad enough perspective. So that might be enough — depending on the client. Another factor is that coaches don't avoid offering advice only on principle, but also because advice is usually not effective. People just don't respond to things that they haven't derived or sought out themselves. So even if a coach does direct a client to consider the environmental or social effects of a behaviour, the client won't respond unless they're already open to that kind of idea. So again, it depends on what clients you choose to work with. But if the only agency a coach has is in choosing which clients they work with — only preaching to the choir, so to speak — then what hope do we, coaches, have in making change in the world? I think it goes back to what I said in the beginning — coaching is about helping people do what they do more effectively. If we choose to work with people who are concerned with social justice or the environment or a just economy, our coaching can be a fulcrum which helps them be more powerful and effective. I don't think that coaching per se has much role in introducing these ideas to clients who haven't already come to them. However, I think as coaches we can lead by making it clear that those are the clients we want to work with — that those are the kind of people we want to support.
Leadership Coach (in addition to the previous role of E4 WIN Team Leader) - presso Hilti Italia
4 年Dear Simo, I love to read your thoughts! A coach, when exploring client's goal, ask also if a goal is sustainable in the long run, what is the opportunity cost and if it's ecological (not from and environmental point of view, but from a broad perspective, that means how the others players will be affected by the pursuing of that goal). Apart from that, any other effort to "push" or "influence" or "drive" is out of the coaching scope. if a coach thinks that the goal or actions done by a client aren't aligned with his own values can quit the process saying clearly what he thinks... that's called "confrontation", when a coach speaks clearly and takes a specific position. From my perspective a coach isn't a hero and shouldn't think "he can change the world"... that's the perfect way to generate manipulation and a misleading behaviour. Client's agenda is Coach agenda...take it or leave it. My 2 cents suggestion for a coach would be "stay humble and don't think in term of good and bad...those moral classifications don't apply with our job".